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What smaller government looks like.

February 6, 2010 1:32 AM

Colorado Springs is a very conservative town that requires a referendum to raise taxes. As this article points out, they recently rejected a proposed property tax increase that would have helped cover a budget gap, after the recession lowered sales tax revenue by $22 million since 2007. So now, voters will see how good individuals are at protecting the common good.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled:

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

It's soooo easy to just lower taxes. It's the benefits from those taxes that are taken for granted. Sure, everyone something for nothing, right? But over at The Inverse Square, Thomas Levenson writes how anti-tax, small-government supporters never seem to comprehend that services that we all pay for - together - through taxes, "include a bunch of stuff essential for a sound economy and any chance of achieving what is commonly thought of as the American way of life."

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Tags: abolish taxes, Colorado Springs, low taxes, small government

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The E-Snub: If They Won't Email You Back, Pretend They Did

February 4, 2010 2:07 PM

Now here's a hilarious story that every person doing business or engaging in an email inquiry can relate to:

Not too long ago, a magazine in Manhattan invited me, by e-mail, to interview for a job. After meeting with me, the managing editor and the director of human resources asked me to take home the standard editing test and return it ASAP. I dutifully obliged.
And then I waited. One day. Two days. A week. A month. Two months. Three … well, you get the picture.

So...what did this writer do?

I have grown weary of this kind of "dissing." People who seem to go blind, mute and limp when all you are seeking are a few keystrokes in reply. Prospective employers whose computers appear to crash when asked to give something resembling a definitive answer, one way or the other.
Annoying e-mail messages plague all of us, but those of a more legitimate nature are surely deserving of a simple reply. Unfortunately, basic e-courtesy is in short supply. So, having been burned in the past by e-boors, I decided that enough was enough. The magazine had left me in limbo. I was going to have my revenge.

Now check out what he does:

Sitting down at my computer one morning, I e-mailed the managing editor to say that I had happily accepted the job. More specifically, I wrote that I was "delighted to learn that I will be joining the editorial team!" I went on to say that "the salary and vacation are fine and I will report for duty bright and early Monday morning."

...and this is where it gets delightful:

Whereupon, after the prolonged cold shoulder I had received, I was immediately bombarded with urgent e-mail messages, accompanied by the online equivalent of bells and whistles -- the red exclamation point. Urgent messages were left on my answering machine, demanding that I call Human Resources at once. It was just too delicious.
When I finally did call back, the H.R. director was beside herself. "Who authorized this?" she demanded breathlessly. "Who was it that told you? There must have been some mistake. Nobody cleared this with me. I don’t get it."

"Well," I said sweetly, "I spoke to the editor in chief and he told me I’ve been hired, so I'll be there first thing Monday. And, let me tell you, I am truly excited about joining your team!"

"But … but … but …" she sputtered.

Revenge...sweet revenge, indeed:

"Listen, lady," I told her, "when you ask someone to come in for an interview, take a test and physically return it to you, and you can't be bothered after three months to let that person know where he or she stands, much less acknowledge even receiving the test back, you are nothing but rude, thoughtless, unprofessional amateurs."
Huffily, she started to give me the stock speech about "our hiring procedures," until I abruptly cut her off with the appropriate barnyard epithet. Then I barked: "Do you get it now? Well, do you?"

Meekly, she conceded, "Yes, I get it."

Now that's the way you handle an e-snub!

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Just walk away.

January 17, 2010 12:25 PM

A recent essay in the NY Times Magazine, written by Roger Lowenstein, had this recommendation for homeowners who are "underwater" with their mortgages:

Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage -- forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So some of them are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go. Is this irresponsible?
Businesses -- in particular Wall Street banks -- make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral -- perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with. But the average American, as if sprung from some Franklinesque mythology, is supposed to honor his debts, or so says the mortgage industry as well as government officials.

Which is exactly his point. Why should the average American be treated any different from the average corporation when it makes a business decision?

And yet multi-gazillion-aire Hang Paulson wants us to act differently:

Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. declared that "any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator -- and one who is not honoring his obligation." (Paulson presumably was not so censorious of speculation during his 32-year career at Goldman Sachs.)

Imagine how the banks would act if we average Americans walked out all together? Think they would re-negotiate the terms of the contract?

Homeowners operate under a "powerful moral constraint" while lenders are busily trying to maximize profits. More important, it might get the system unstuck. If lenders feared an avalanche of strategic defaults, they would have an incentive to renegotiate loan terms. In theory, this could produce a wave of loan modifications -- the very goal the Treasury has been pursuing to end the crisis.

Voila! Treat the housing market like the business it really is, and suddenly you'd get a much quicker return to normalcy.

Listen up bankers! You won't know what hit you once us customers get our acts together!!